“No more imports of defence equipment”—these six stinging words from a defence ministry directive to top defence officials in January underlined the Narendra Modi government’s growing impatience with its struggling initiative to indigenise defence hardware production. The directives from defence secretary Ajay Kumar outlined a jump-start of its defence industrial base and a clampdown on imports.

It isn’t the first such attempt, though. Make in India, announced in 2015, was a non-starter. Its reboot, Aatmanirbhar (self-reliant) Bharat, announced by PM Modi on May 12, 2020, hopes to chip away at India’s dubious distinction of being the world’s second-largest importer of military hardware. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute says India was the world’s second largest buyer of warships, fighter aircraft and missiles between 2016 and 2020 (roughly 60 per cent of its defence hardware is imported). Unfortunately, Make in India’s new avatar, too, has been a slow starter. Though imports fell by 33 per cent between 2011-2015 and 2016-2020, a long import pipeline worth billions of dollars points to a cloudy future.

The government’s mid-course impetus to Aatmanirbhar Bharat thus sets the roadmap for defence acquisitions over the